Experimental Researches in Electricity. Twenty-ninth Series.

£5,000 · Offered by Shapero Rare Books

inscribed presentation offprint The rare offprint, with presentation inscription at the head of the title page, 'Rev. Dr. Robinson, from the author'. The second of Faraday's important 1851 papers establishing his concept of 'lines of force', which had originally been proposed in his earliest paper on electromagnetism in 1821. 'Faraday had thus found experimental evidence that magnetism was a universal property of matter and also for his views of the nature of matter and space. He outlined his new understanding in his lecture 'Thoughts on ray-vibrations' delivered on 3 April 1846. This lecture was seen by Maxwell, Silvanus P. Thompson, and others as laying the foundations of the field theory of electromagnetism. Although Faraday had used the word 'field' in 1845, it was in a purely descriptive sense of the space surrounding the magnet. During the first half of the 1850s he developed arguments for the reality of the field, which by 1851 he defined in terms of lines of force. The mathematization of field theory by Thomson and Maxwell, in consultation with Faraday, led to the theory becoming one of the fundamental concepts of modern physics. It also led Faraday to a lessening of his scepticism of the power of mathematics to describe nature' (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography). 'From 1831 to 1852, Michael Faraday published his "Experimental Researches in Electricity" in The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. These papers contain not only an impressive series of

• Binding: Hardcover

Found via Rare Books Intel, a search across rare-book dealers, auction houses and marketplaces worldwide.